Treatment with empagliflozin may positively impact life expectancy in adults with type 2 diabetes and established cardiovascular disease, according to results from the EMPA-REG OUTCOME trial recently published in Circulation. Using actuarial methods and assuming that the demonstrated beneficial effects of empagliflozin remain consistent with long-term use, empagliflozin was estimated to extend life expectancy by one to 4.5 years on average, depending on age, when compared with placebo. This analysis suggests that treatment with empagliflozin could add years of life. Boehringer Ingelheim and Eli Lilly and Company are marketing the drug as Jardiance.
Researchers led by Brian Claggett, PhD, of the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, conducted an analysis of data from 7,020 people included in the EMPA-REG OUTCOME trial that showed estimated life expectancy increased across all ages when adults were treated with empagliflozin as compared to those treated with placebo. Specifically, estimated mean survival in people aged 45 years was 32.1 years with empagliflozin versus 27.6 years with placebo, resulting in a mean survival difference of 4.5 years. In people aged 50, 60, 70 and 80 years old, the mean survival difference with Jardiance compared to placebo was an additional 3.1 years, 2.5 years, 2 years and 1 year, respectively.
“For a 60-year-old living with type 2 diabetes, who has already had a cardiovascular event, previous studies estimate that life expectancy could be reduced by up to 12 years compared with someone of the same age without these conditions,” Claggett says. “This latest analysis estimates that empagliflozin could prolong such a person’s life span by, on average, 2.5 years.”
The primary EMPA-REG OUTCOME trial results, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in September 2015, demonstrated a 38 percent relative risk reduction in cardiovascular death and a 32 percent relative risk reduction in all-cause mortality with empagliflozin in people with type 2 diabetes and established cardiovascular disease, compared with placebo, over a period of 3.1 years. Modelling based on the EMPA-REG OUTCOME trial data was used to quantify the potential benefit of empagliflozin on residual life span.
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